Um, Pardon Me?

John "Respectful Campaign" McCain serves up a little "respect" for Barack Obama:

Republican John McCain vowed Sunday to "whip" Democratic rival Barack Obama's "you-know-what" when the two presidential candidates meet Wednesday in their final televised debate.

…McCain said he and running mate Sarah Palin would continue campaigning hard in the three weeks left before Election Day, in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. The two planned a joint appearance Monday in Virginia, a Republican stronghold turned battleground this time.

"We're going to spend a lot of time and after I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going out 24/7," McCain said.

…Still, McCain promised to run a "respectful" campaign in the weeks to come.

I'm sure he did.

Anybody else got a problem with threatening to "whip" the "you-know-what" of the first African-American presidential candidate in the nation's history? Sure, sure—he didn't mean it that way, but that's what owning the context is all about. Just like it doesn't mean quite the same thing when you want to punch Hillary Clinton in the mouth as when you want to punch Bill Clinton, and just like it doesn't mean quite the same thing when you compare Barack Obama to a monkey as when you compare George Bush to one, it doesn't mean the same thing when you threaten to "whip" a white opponent as when you threaten to "whip" a black opponent, at least when you're a white guy yourself.

Especially when you're a white guy who, for example, has hosted a 2005 fundraiser for then-Alabama Lt. Governor GOP primary candidate George Wallace, Jr., a four-time speaker for the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC)—a group which Wallace calls "good, patriotic people" and was created from the mailing list of the old white supremacist White Citizens Councils, has been noted as becoming increasingly "radical and racist" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which classifies the CCC as a hate group, opposes interracial marriage, hate crime legislation, massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples, and "Afrocentric" curricula in schools, and says of itself:

We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character. We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.

Those are the kind of friends John McCain has. (At least by the definition of "friends" his campaign uses.) I believe they're colloquially called racists.

(Which, btw, makes all of the McCain campaign's caterwauling about Rep. John Lewis comparing him to Daddy George Wallace all the more hilarious. And Obama's apologia all the more unnecessary.)

If John McCain didn't know what he was saying, or doesn't understand in retrospect why it was wildly inappropriate, then he's too fucking stupid to be president.

In addition to all the other reasons.